Show/Hide password accessibility and password hints tutorial | Part of a Whole

A good tutorial on making password fields accessible when you’ve got the option to show and hide the input.

Reflections on software performance - Made of Bugs

I’ve really come to appreciate that performance isn’t just some property of a tool independent from its functionality or its feature set. Performance — in particular, being notably fast — is a feature in and of its own right, which fundamentally alters how a tool is used and perceived.

This is a fascinating look into how performance has knock-on effects beyond the obvious:

It’s probably fairly intuitive that users prefer faster software, and will have a better experience performing a given task if the tools are faster rather than slower.

What is perhaps less apparent is that having faster tools changes how users use a tool or perform a task.

This observation is particularly salient for web developers:

We have become accustomed to casually giving up factors of two or ten or more with our choices of tools and libraries, without asking if the benefits are worth it.

I finally made sense of front end build tools. You can, too.

I still find the landscape of build tools completely overwhelming, but I found this distinction to be a useful way of categorising the different kinds of build tools:

Build tools do two things:

1. Install things
2. Do things

So bower, npm and yarn install things, whereas grunt, gulp, and webpack do things.

I think.

It is as if you were doing work

Stop dilly-dallying and just get this work done, okay?

Using NPM as a Build Tool | gablaxian.com

For a small to medium sized project, this sounds like a sensible way to approach build tasks. It feels nice and close to the metal.

adactio/ama: Ask @adactio anything!

I’ve made one of them there “ask me anything” things so that you can ask me, well …anything.

Improve Your Billing Form’s UX In One Day – Smashing Magazine

A few straightforward steps for improving the usability of credit card forms. The later steps involve JavaScript but the first step uses nothing more than straight-up HTML.

Password Masking

A great investigation into the usability benefits of allowing users to fill in their passwords in plain text.

Major caveat: make sure you still offer the ability to mask passwords too.

Labelmask | Brad Frost Web

I really like this interface idea from Brad that provides the utility of input masks but without the accessibility problems.

LukeW | Mobile Design Details: Hide/Show Passwords

I concur completely with Luke’s assessment here. Most password-masking on the web is just security theatre. Displaying password inputs by default (but with an option to hide) should be the norm.

digitalBush » Masked Input Plugin

This looks like a handy way of enhancing forms to have input masks (Luke W. would approve). Right now it’s a jQuery plug-in but I’m sure someone as smart as you would be able to create a standalone version, right?

ifttt / About ifttt

This intrigues me. “If this, then that” sounds like a good approach to loosely joining some small pieces.

Kitchen Interfaces Suck; Let's Break Down Why | Co.Design

Aza Raskin on the UI failings of kitchens.

Did you have a nice day? - Made by Rattle

A beautiful SVG visualisation (with source code) of the Rattle team's experience of dConstruct 2010.

The Whale Hunt / A storytelling experiment / by Jonathan Harris

An experiment in human storytelling, using a photographic heartbeat of 3,214 images to document an Eskimo whale hunt in Barrow, Alaska.

SHOUTS & MURMURS: My Gal: Humor: The New Yorker

This article by George Saunders had me giggling from start to finish.

Creating Passionate Users: The Asymptotic Twitter Curve

Kathy Sierra doesn't like Twitter. Join us, Kathy... be a lover, not a hater.